The Worsening Squad cohesion.

General Discussion
162

I mostly agree with your general sentiment that the marine flanks should be made easier if possible and the xeno death ball is always a very hard problem… But, I think you’re missing the key piece of the puzzle here.

Marine power vs xeno power is sort of a math equation where both sides should ideally be roughly equal. So if we’re doing all those things you suggested to empower marines, we should either nerf them elsewhere or buff xenos to compensate.

But in actuality, what keeps happening is that xenos get routine nerfs one after the other, with maybe a couple of very rare small and barely relevant niche buffs per year. Marines, on the other hand get a lot of “new” powercreep, but it’s almost all support stuff - CAS, mortar, Research buffs, now the new Defcon giving them a lot more sustain, the new nuke giving them that “win by default if you stall long enough” button.

So if the marine support side is so strong and would keep getting stronger and the xenos are barely holding on from the nerfcreep, then the basic marine frontline has to be weak and keep getting weaker too.

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163

In this situation I see what needs to be achieved, and what gets you there. If we want flanks to work, we have to figure out why they don’t work already, and I think that is because flanks die the very second they meet any resistance that isn’t a couple T1/T2 xenos.

More specifically because 8 guys struggle to hold back 1-2 T3’s without sustaining serious injuries and treating those injuries takes much longer and requires more manpower (specialized and restricted manpower no less) than it does for xenos to recuperate and attack again, and when you’ve got 3 wounded/dead out of 8 you also have 1-3 treating/dragging those guys and your 8-man force is now actually a 2-5-man force after the very first engagement when at their peak size they still barely even survived, and oh look here comes the same or more xenos than the last attack that nearly wiped you and medics haven’t even got their defibs out.

There’s little to nothing marines have that can delay or deter a couple T3’s, let alone a substantial xeno mass push, that isn’t itself a substantial marine force - mortar, cas, sentries, cades; they last seconds.

You basically need the combat space to be saturated with marines bodies specifically, to the point you actually have marines who cannot meaningfully contribute to a fight, because they need to work as meat replacements who cycle into the engagement and back out again.

Since you cannot do that with flanks because you lack numbers, and you cannot meaningfully sustain a push nor block for time with any available tools, flanks cannot work.

The only thing that works is a large mass of bodies and a churn of attrition. This is what all the buffing and nerfing of various things has resulted in. You can’t fix it by doing compensatory buffs to both sides.

We’re at this position because of specific things marines as a force cannot do. We can either change that, or we can keep where we are. (We will keep where we are)

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164

See, you still ignored the main point, which is, is the marine ability to flank more important than other capabilities the marines have? Is it more important than say a researcher main’s ability to get antistun stims at 1 hour in and trivialize half the xeno castes? Is it more important than a GP’s ability to routinely kill 30% of more of the xenos? You can’t have it all, as much as you may want to ignore this.

Yes, 2019-style unga gets really punished these days. Well, learn the new meta, old man, which is sitting in the FOB for 2 hours while you rely on fire support and wait for the stims and the nuke.

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165

It’s more interesting and fun to play than a murderball.

It’s essentially the difference between tanky/attrition based gameplay and active/positional gameplay, which introduces more of a back and forth dance in the fighting. You think about where to move, how to bait, what sorts of tricks you can do.

With attritional style fights it’s just a mindless slugfest until numbers reduce enough for a total rout.

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166

Yeah, but you still have to solve the marine force multiplier problem. Lets say now a single marine can facetank two Ravagers slashing him at the same time. Now marines can flank rather easily. Lets say it’s a round where xenos somehow(a miracle) stopped the marine push and killed 20 marines. Marines now retreated and sit in the megaFOB, relying on the fire support and waiting for the stims+nuke. It’s 60 of them left and each of them can facetank two Ravagers. How the hell are xenos supposed to effectively fight them in this situation? Well, if your answer is that “they shouldn’t, they should cope”, then is it really that surprising that the devs aren’t listening to you?

Obviously it’s a simplified example, but any buffs to the marine baseline actually make the marine force multipliers stronger too and some care should ideally be put into avoiding giving marines any new capabilities that they can exploit to make the already unpleasant FOB holds even stronger. Like faster cade building time, tank\APC or stronger sentries.

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167

well from my view point its cohesion like no joke the reason flanks fail many of times is purely do to poor cohesion.

This is in 2 ways, firstly the flank is lacking the man power do to ungas being ungas and really should be scraped but for what ever reason the plan still ends up happening.

Secondly the main front being cowards and not pushing in a timely manner.

The thing you have to keep in mind is that a flank is not FOR cutting into the xenos lines but to make the xeno go ‘oh shit we need to put a T3 or 2 up here ASAP’

you got to keep in mind flanks are almost always planned to get around hell chokes that can’t get morter’ed or CAS’ed.

A good flank is made so as long as the main mass pushes they will be able to link up with the flank in a timely manner. its really ALL about timing timing timing!!! and poor cohesion mess’s with timing…yes we can get that deathball moving up but we can’t seem to get it to charge into hell at the time its most needed.

Its as you say the flanks have little staying power but a good flank is always followed up by a mad charge.

So really uhhh i guess this whole thread can be blamed on Fear RP in the end.

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168

There’s only like one or two GPs that can do this, maybe we should nerf them instead of GP…

Marines have been getting better support and when it’s properly used, it is devastating.
I think that one of two things have happened over the years,
the game has been slowly changed over time to the point where there’s a larger focus on individual high-skill performance rather than having the entire team be mediocre, people have had a lot of time to perfect their gameplay to the point where a single player can influence the round massively on both sides.

or there’s just a lot of newer players than there used to be, on xenos this is the common sight of seeing Young Caste (XX-123) has died, though from my view there’s a lot more new marines than new xenos, so that might also be influencing it, and as a new player you obviously don’t know when it’s a good time to push no matter what, and when it’s a good time to run at full speed.

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169

cas skill (input buttons on (buffed btw) cas interface for free frags)

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170

When Kyle Mortland goes GP all the xenos mute their game sounds and close the chat box so they can’t hear or see the warnings, I don’t know any way to explain how he top frags every single time he plays GP (and the front/main push is CASable).

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171

he just figured out the meta on how to optimise firestrikes on specific map chokes

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172

Kyle Mortland and Caden Nickleson communicates with JTAC and SLs. It is that simple. Poor COs, XOs, SOs, SLs, and POs do not. They will call the SLs on the RT if comms goes down. They will respond always. They are dependable. If they ask me for a flare, they get a flare.

It starts and ends with effective communication.

Other POs, one in particular on NV the other day, undertake their fire missions unilaterally and they end up killing mainly marines. I think people think about gaming as the PO (or SLs) and really it is about communication. If you know where the marines are, and they know where and when you are, and they TRUST you - then you can begin to depend on them.

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173

It’s not entirely the SL’s fault no. I did mention it’s also CIC. Regularly as an SO in the old days, you were expected to make callouts on people not following the SL. The SL is is obviously busy with the whole not dying thing, and the CIC has objectively more information than the SL does. I essentially just don’t see anyone in CIC doing that anymore.

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174

This has always been an issue, I think that it comes in ebbs and flows. Forgive my writing if its a little clunky , as I’m commuting currently.

Charlie Breakfast was a 2017 creation to try get people invested in the squad and the people in it, this encouraged roleplay and made people care for the people they were with more, so they’d stick together more.

A player led approach is always harder to be consistent with.

I also think that the hollowing out of MP duties, to the point that nobody will send people planet side to handle arrests due to the rules which are extremely restrictive meaning that there is no consequences for ignoring the orders of a SL, CO, etc, or going solo.

These limitations are the heavy handed rules that, once upon a time, had their place as temporary measures, but are no longer wanted or needed as a whole. Yes, the rounds are more smooth as a whole, more generic, but for that, we have sacrificed some of the unique scenarios that could, in the past, occur through player led situations. Rules are needed, restrictions too, but we also should evaluate the ones we had in the past, because we are no longer 2018 CM, priorities and communities change

This is a greater issue as a whole, so allow me to pivot a little.

The gameplay loop has also become tighter and more mechanically aligned, for better or worse, mutinies are a rare site, due to lengthy process you must undertake and the rather ridiculously short time marines have to merely unload before the Dropship is called down and swiftly sent to the shipside.

We do not have memorials anymore, no more debriefs, no more mutinies, no more satisfying conclusions to the individual and group stories that we, the players, and the staff, have been cultivating for sometimes hours, just to be cut short because it may inconvenience another side for a few minutes longer.

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175

We have already extended the endround by three minutes. How much time do you need?!

176

As much as we can get, obviously

Hot take: make it so after each marine major the round won’t end until all marines go to cryo

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177

what about just removing marines if they are so needy

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178

As someone who played and still plays a lot of Command roles as Amira Young, I gotta say that the command meta has really not changed but also changed, and its basically been summed up by everyone else here.

Its murderball or die to a Queen screech combo, but that makes every round stereotypical and easy to predict.

If its LV, I know its a stall till nuke, win on Beach because xenos are bald, or lose in Caves because queen combo screeches.

If its Soros, we lose at East LZ to constant harassment in tight corridors, or we lose Engineering most of the time because of the same issue.

If its Fiorinna, we lose at Armory or Yard because of constant queen screech flanks.

Marines and xenos are just built for murderballing now and so there is no reason to listen to SL’s anymore as long as you are near the murderball (aka The Front). Thats why when I go SL, despite being an experienced SL and finally got my GySgt (since I played a lot back before time perks) I still rarely get a quarter to even a half of a squad to follow me. Only a FEW rounds ive had EVERY marine follow me, and thats the only reason I still put in the hours to play SL; for those magical moments when your a 20 man squad and every single marine is rallied around you listening to your commands and you pull off a win, like when on LV I held down Comms with all of Charlie and managed to ward off the entire hive 2-3 times and wiped a quarter of them with a Incendiary OB despite CIC telling me to abandon comms because I knew if we lost comms we might as well evac in the current meta.

Marine pheremones would be nice and all but it just won’t fix the issue of marines gravitating to murderballs since they do not want to spend 1 hour + in Dchat after being queen screeched and runner grabbed across the map.

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179

For that last point, the way MP works right now also means less character conflict. Which is - y’know - fun. MPs having OOC protections, mutinies being so restricted, and the Malicious Compliance rule have all deeply impacted that amount of character to character conflict.

I’d hope even the biggest MP hater in the world can realize that hating or quarreling with MPs… isn’t even fun anymore. All the restrictions put around it have lead to less arrests so less time in brig, sure. But that’s less appeals handled by CIC staff who should be getting ML experience. Less friends and brothers in arms being put behind bars for you to fight for. Less Authoritarians who need a wrench thrown into their plans.

Who cares if we have 16 rounds a day when none of them make a core memory worth a damn? I’ll always remember being thrown into brig with half my squad because we spoke German on comms - a SOP violation. And the MPs didn’t beg and plead for us to stop with their tails between their legs. They threw us in their no questions asked and CIC and the other squads just had to adapt to a new, unique, player-generated set of conditions. No artificial flavor needed. The event this round is the loudmouth redhead SL ‘Salt’ barked orders in German so you are half a squad down.

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180

Not only MPs, marines as a whole can’t conflict with each other. Sometimes when you try to provoke random dudes into a briefing brawl or disarm fight - you get a funny admin PM, because goofballs perceive an insult towards their character as something personal

*cough-cough, remember when aCO got ahelped after ordering his neon-hair SO to get a shave?

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Speaking on topic, I go to the front instead of wherever my squad is going simply because I don’t trust them. I’m not trusting my life to someone just because they have the same runechat color

If you’re moving with the murderball - you have much more guarantee that John “USCM” Robusto (who’s always on the frontline) will drag your ass to a Joe Synth (who’s almost always on the frontline) and they’ll patch you up

While sticking to your squad will most likely lead to a situation where you charged for a kill (nobody followed), got shot in the ass by PVT John McFF (he shoots M39 AP into nothing), dragged back (with your weapon left behind), and treated by Jane “Tramadol” Overdose (she doesn’t know corpsmen can fix IBs)

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181

Delta SL here, i do my best to maintain cohesion by spamming megaphone use and blowing the whistle alot. i know its hard to herd cats and keep em together. as some cats love you and will listen and others are just outside cats that do whatever. i find as long as im spamming directional info and helpful info in general i can keep a decent amount of cohesion. ultimatly i feel the best approach to getting and then maintaing cohesion is to be informationaly helpful. as long as i can help others with situational awareness and guide the directions of approch i can keep a murderball together.

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